One who in dreams sees things good and bad, high and low, favorable and fearful, thinks that they are actually real, and never for a moment thinks that they are unreal while dreaming. Even so is this world till the dawn of Self-Knowledge.
-- Shankara
"The sage Vasishtha said there are two kinds of dreams: the short ones and the long one. We call the short ones 'dreams' when we wake up from them each morning; we call the long one 'reality' till we wake into enlightenment. The short dreams are really dreams within a dream. Each has its own self-validating logic, its own physics, its own built-in history...Similarly with Vasishtha's long dream...There can never be evidence for any 'real' universe outside the mind; any such 'evidence' is only one more experience within the mind...By challenging the reality of a dream, however, we may start to see through it."
-- Dean Sluyter, from Why the Chicken Crossed the Road & Other Hidden Enlightenment Teachings from the Buddha to Bebop to Mother Goose
